PBS can't tune out moderate Muslims

About the Author

Ken McIntyreSenior Editor, The Daily Signal, and Guardabassi Fellow in Media and Public PolicyThe Daily Signal

Americans have a pretty good chance after all to see "the film
PBS doesn't want you to see."

That's how the producers of "Islam vs. Islamists: Voices from
the Muslim Center" describe their powerful documentary about
moderate Muslims who refuse to be intimidated and silenced by
extremists within their faith.

Four months ago, the Public Broadcasting Service squelched the
52-minute film as "unfair" and "alarmist" in telling the
stories of four Muslim professionals who stand up to activist imams
and their followers in Denmark, Canada, France and the United
States.

Now, though, viewers can decide for themselves whether the
filmmakers were heavy handed in exploring answers to a haunting
question since the Sept. 11 attacks: Why aren't we hearing more
from Muslims who denounce terrorists and their hateful
ideology?

As of Aug. 14, "Islam vs. Islamists" was scheduled to air on at
least 40 public television stations in 18 states in the weeks
leading up to the sixth anniversary of the attacks.

Director Martyn Burke and producers Frank Gaffney and Alex
Alexiev understandably were disappointed that Oregon Public
Broadcasting -- not PBS with its marketing support and supposed
stamp of quality -- is distributing their baby.

Viewers may see the film on stations in 21 of the top 60
markets, including such big cities as Philadelphia, San Jose, San
Francisco, Dallas, Detroit, Houston and Denver.

More of the 200-odd independent programmers for 350 public
stations are likely to pick up the documentary as they build fall
lineups, said David Davis, OPB's vice president for national
production.

"I've been pleased. We're seeing very good results," Davis said
in an interview.

PBS and lead affiliate WETA, outside Washington, D.C., had
pressed Burke, a Canadian, to lose his conservative American
partners and soften the documentary's point of view. After the
producers refused, PBS -- home to such irreproachable fare as Bill
Moyers, "Frontline" and, ahem, "P.O.V." -- rejected "Islam vs.
Islamists" for inclusion in its "America at a Crossroads" series in
April.

The documentary defines Islamists as radical Muslims who want
their religion's law, sharia, to become the basis of politics and
society, even in non-Muslim democracies. The men profiled confront
imams whom they say use Saudi oil wealth to spread an "insidious
ideology" behind a false face of moderation in mosques throughout
the West.

"I don't like terrorists, and I don't like the Islamists,
period," Shaykh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani, a Sufi Muslim leader in
America and Britain who appears in the film, told the audience for
a July 12 screening at The Heritage Foundation in Washington.

Gaffney argued that the left has made "common cause" with the
Islamists by depicting them as part of mainstream Islam and
rebuffing criticism as "hate speech."

Gaffney and Alexiev, who run the D.C.-based Center for Security
Policy, beat up the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which
gives taxpayers' money to PBS and invested $700,000 in their film.
They accused it of "dumping" the documentary in Oregon to quell a
political flap over the PBS ban.

But it looks like the fair-minded folks at OPB -- no hotbed of
conservatism -- are hustling to get the film into as many homes in
prime time as they can.

"When I saw the documentary," Davis said, "it immediately struck
me that this was a very important subject that most Americans don't
know much about -- the battle for the hearts and minds of
Muslims."

To make it go down easier, OPB pulled a Ted Koppel by taping a
separate, half-hour segment in which three Muslim Americans talk
about the issues raised. This is hardly a humiliating adulteration,
and so far all but five stations have opted to air it
afterward.

One panelist, Phoenix physician Zuhdi Jasser, is portrayed in
the film as vilified by fellow Muslims for speaking out against
extremism. The others are Rafia Zakaria, a Pakistan-born
lawyer and professor at Indiana University, and Ahmed Rehab, the
Cairo-born executive director of Chicago's chapter of the Council
on American Islamic Relations, itself criticized as an apologist
for terrorists.

Calls and e-mails from viewers who believe in free speech and
want to make up their own minds could help convince more public TV
stations to schedule "Islam vs. Islamists."

Ken McIntyre is the Marilyn and Fred Guardabassi Fellow in
Media and Public Policy Studies at The Heritage
Foundation.

About the Author

Ken McIntyreSenior Editor, The Daily Signal, and Guardabassi Fellow in Media and Public PolicyThe Daily Signal